David McElroy

If you know the story of this website, you probably know that I started writing for an audience that was obsessed with politics. Over the years, I have almost completely rejected addressing the partisan political world — for reasons that I’ve explained before.

In the last couple of years, I have increasingly focused more narrowly on the question of how people who see the world as I do can (and should) live in a culture which has completely abandoned us. As I’ve grown more confident about precisely the things I want to express, I’ve realized that I don’t know how to reach the people who need and want to connect with the ideas I’m expressing.

As a result, I recently commissioned a market study to look at what I’m writing and tell me how best to connect with people who should be the natural audience for my ideas. I’m not allowed to disclose the identity of the firm that did the analysis, but I can say it’s a major West Coast firm that many of you have heard of.

I realize that this won’t be especially interesting to many people who simply want to read the articles and move on, but I thought it would be interesting enough for a small subset of you to reproduce the executive summary of the report here.

I should point out that the notes included with the study suggested that its use of the term “Christian” here shouldn’t be interpreted in its strict theological sense, because the research said that many of the people included in the category would be people who have a broad Christian worldview — as expressed in a broader western philosophy — not just those who would claim overtly Christian theological beliefs or practices.

I just received the study Friday and I’m still studying the details, but it feels validating so far to see that a third party firm sees a viable niche readership for the things I’m writing about. The question remains about how to specifically reach potential readers who have no reason to ever realize that this website exists.

With all that said, if you’re interested, keep reading to dive in to the executive summary of a report that I’ll be contemplating (and hopefully acting on) as I go forward.

As always, I do appreciate the thousands of you who read my work regularly. I never take you for granted. Keep Reading

I want to tell everybody to shut up. It’s not personal, though.

I don’t know whether to shout or whisper. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s an entire culture that I want to be quiet, not this person or that person.

I’m not angry with anybody. There’s nobody in particular who I want to shut up. It’s chaotic voices and public background music and blaring televisions. But it’s visual “noise,” too. It’s flickering screens of all kinds. It’s beeping phones and computers and mobile devices. It’s constant notifications.

It’s a culture that demands my attention and won’t leave me alone.

When I’m honest with myself, though, I realize that I’m the problem. I have the ability to shut this cacophony off at any time. But I refuse to take control of my life and my environment. I think I can be the master of my media culture.

I’m so addicted to what has come to seem normal that I’m like an alcoholic who thinks he can have just one drink. Or maybe two.

But in the rare moments when I can listen to my own spirit, I know I’m making this way too complicated. It’s not about the noise and the screens and the notifications.

It’s about silence. I desperately need to find silence for my heart and my mind — so I can hear the still small voice that whispers truth and love and wisdom when I’m quiet enough to hear it.

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I have no patience anymore for people who believe they’re going to save the world.

Maybe I’ve seen too many would-be saviors turn into monsters. Maybe my time working in politics taught me what the system does to idealists.

Or maybe I just see too much of my younger self in these well-meaning do-gooders.

Even if you have brilliant ideas — and even if I agree with your ideas — there’s something fundamentally misguided about the notion that the world is waiting for you to come along and save everyone.

Any plan to “save the world” is necessarily going to involve imposing control from the top down. Even if we ignore the stunning arrogance and immorality of imposing control on millions or even billions of people against their will, the truth is that you will never be able to do that.

Your efforts to impose your will are doomed to be crushed by political systems that have existed since long before you were born. And recent history is littered with the corpses of would-be tyrants — and with many millions of their innocent victims.

So what should the budding idealist do — when much of the most popular advice to young people urges them to “go out and change the world”?

That’s simple. Change yourself. That’s the only thing over which you have actual control.

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